CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-04-20 published
Jack HARRELL,
BoxingTrainer And Historian: (1944-2006)
With the motto 'Refuse to Lose,' he ran Toronto's under appreciated
Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame and trained aspiring boxers for
43 years
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Damon Runyon could have come up with this: A sailor who gets
into the fight game, eats and breathes boxing for more than four
decades, helps kids stay out of trouble, marries three times,
dies relatively young, and is remembered by fellow salts and
pugilists as a tough guy with a heart of gold.
That was "Florida" Jack
HARRELL -- a character in a character's
world. He trained boxers for 43 years and ran the unheralded
Canadian Boxing Hall of Fame, housed in his eponymous gym up
a gloomy flight of stairs at the corner of Yonge and Bloor streets
in Toronto. Its high point came in October, 2002, when Mr.
HARRELL
inducted Muhammad Ali during half time at a Toronto Argonauts
game.
Despite the attendance of then heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis
and former titleholders Larry Holmes and Evander Holyfield --
and adoring chants of "Ali! Ali!" from the crowd -- it was an
event Mr. HARRELL lamented was buried by the media. He also rued
that his boxing museum never caught the public's attention, despite
the effort and his own money that he'd put into it.
"Most people just walk by. They haven't realized that there are
two professional sports halls of fame on Yonge Street," he said
a few years ago, referring to the more famous Hockey Hall of
Fame.
"It always struck me as odd, in a nice way, that here was an
American guy [who was] into Canadian boxing history, who took
it on himself to open a museum and the Canadian Boxing Hall of
Fame," recalled George
CHUVALO, the Canadian heavyweight warhorse
who twice fought Mr. Ali and earned Mr.
HARRELL's respect for
never being knocked down through 97 pro fights.
"He loved boxing and he helped a lot of kids," said Mr.
CHUVALO.
"He was a good-hearted guy. A bit flamboyant, but a cool guy.
A character -- a good character."
With every finger ringed and bejewelled in a way that made his
hands look like they were brandishing high-end brass knuckles,
coupled with a black hat and Hulk Hogan-style mustache, Mr.
HARRELL
was "the sort of a guy who should have gone to Hollywood," said
Spider Jones, a three-time former Golden Gloves champion and
Hall of Fame inductee who now co-hosts ESPN Classic's Famous
Fights with Mr.
CHUVALO. "
Jack was wearing bling before bling
was in."
He had some rough edges but Mr.
HARRELL "was always looking at
the bright side of things and constantly making plans for the
future," remembered his friend, Robin
PITCHER, a one-time referee
and judge for Boxing Ontario who wandered into Mr.
HARRELL's
gym one day "just to check it out."
Mr. HARRELL's son, Jackson Jefferson, known as J.J., a provincial
Junior A champion in 1994-'95, became Mr.
PITCHER's personal
trainer, "and I began to learn to box at the tender age of 58."
Mr. HARRELL was a "wicked" pool player, Mr.
PITCHER recalled,
and a regular at the Naval Club of Toronto, where he regaled
patrons with tales of boxing and the sea -- aware, perhaps, of
the parallels.
The "Florida" moniker was owed to his birthplace but also to
a voice once described as thicker than a Tallahassee swamp. An
only child, he grew up in north Florida and served in the U.S. Navy
from 1962 until 1966, starting at the Great Lakes Training Center
in Illinois and onto the communications cruiser U.S.S. Northampton
and the destroyer U.S.S. Claude Jones. He served a brief tour
in Vietnam, about which he spoke little.
No one seems to know why Mr.
HARRELL came to Toronto in 1974,
but he did it in a 1937 Chevy hotrod that he drove for years
afterward. He worked for about a dozen years as a subway train
driver, then opened a boxing gym on Yonge Street. About six years
ago, he moved it half a block north, where it endured a fire
and a perennially leaky roof.
When membership dwindled from 300 -- about half of them women
to 50 or so, he struggled to keep the place open. "Right now,
I've got one foot on the top of the ground and trying to get
the other off the banana peel and get it going," he said a year
ago. "It hasn't been easy."
Yet he lived his motto of "Refuse to Lose," and the doors stayed
open until five days after his death.
"I don't know how he did it," sighed Mr.
PITCHER, "but I do know
that it drained him financially, physically and emotionally."
Mr. CHUVALO is all too aware of the pitfalls of the fight game.
"Guys like Jack are really unsung heroes. They don't get enough
credit for what they do. That's a tough business, to open a gym
and keep it going. If you want to get rich quick, you better
not open a boxing gym."
Even so, Mr.
HARRELL owned quite a collection of ring memorabilia
that was rumoured to have cost him $100,000 (admission to the
public was free). There was Rubin (Hurricane) Carter's robe,
championship belts, magazines, ticket stubs (Dempsey versus Tunney,
Philadelphia, September 23, 1926, ringside, $27.50), vintage
posters on the walls, scorecards, fight-worn gear and records
of every professional fight on Canadian soil. His prize possession
was said to be an 80-year-old speed bag platform used by Mr. Ali
and Mr. CHUVALO when they trained at the Lansdowne gym for their
memorable 1966 fight at Maple Leaf Gardens.
It wasn't all bling. There were also reminders of such Canadian
also linked as linked as -foughts as Jack (Rapier of the North) Delaney and George
(Little Chocolate) Dixon.
As for the hall of fame, which was founded in 1969 and housed
in Florida Jack's Boxing Club since 2000, Mr.
HARRELL knew that
at around 350 names, the list of inductees was bloated. He talked
about starting over and using the space "for guys who really
should be there."
Anyway, the mementos now languish in the dark, still in their
long, glass display cases, or are crated up, awaiting an uncertain
future. "Maybe with Jack's death comes the death of the Canadian
Boxing Hall of Fame," mused Mr. Jones. "With Jack gone, who's
gonna step up to the plate?"
The gym, on the other hand, known for its punishing conditioning
program, was the place for Hollywood types to get buffed when
they shot in Toronto. Mr.
HARRELL whipped actors Mira Sorvino,
Chris Penn and Carrie-Anne Moss of Matrix fame into shape for
their movie roles. He appeared in a music video with Mr. Ali's
daughter, Laila, and served as boxing consultant on the 2000
teen thriller film, The Skulls.
He fought a bit as an amateur and in the service, but claimed
he never had the right people behind him to turn pro. Asked who
Mr. HARRELL's favourite boxer was, Mr. Jones doesn't hesitate:
Sugar Ray Robinson.
While Mr. HARRELL may have been at home amid the thud of heavy
bags and the smell of sweat, "he was frustrated with the whole
fight scene," Mr. Jones said, referring to the lack of big-ticket
cards and tepid interest in the sport in Canada, at least compared
to hockey or baseball.
"He didn't get any support from Canadians, the sports world,
the media, the other fighters. But his whole life was talking
boxing. He really loved the fight game. That was his life, man."
And he never turned anyone away from his gym, especially kids
for whom boxing may have meant the difference between a life
and jail -- or worse. There were several of those. One of them
remained behind after all the other guests had left a memorial
for Mr. HARRELL held last month at the Naval Club.
"He was sobbing his heart out," said club first vice-president
Norrie MILLEN. "He explained that Jack had taken him off the
streets and treated him like a son. He just did not know what
he was going to do now that Jack had 'crossed the bar.' It was
so moving and had us all a bit weepy that Jack could affect one
young life so much."
Jack Raymond
HARRELL was born in Tallahassee, Florida, on December 4,
1944, and died in Toronto of pneumonia on March 12, 2006. He
was 61. He leaves two sons, J.J., 22, and Eric, 13, and a fiancée,
Judith PASHLEY.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-04-27 published
Jean LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY,
Nurse And
UnionOrganizer (1931-2006)
In 1957, the year she completed training, Ontario nurses were
overworked, underpaid, undervalued and expected to stand when
a doctor entered the room. She decided to do something about it
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Toronto -- Asked about working conditions for nurses in Ontario
in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Anita
ABDULLAH chuckles in
that exasperated way. "We were indentured servants," sighs the
London, Ontario, nurse, who began working in 1970. "Little more
than glorified slaves." In 1973, newly minted registered nurses
earned $7,736 a year. No health benefits. No occupational safety
provisions. No notice or severance required for layoffs. Overtime
of 30 minutes or less a day was unpaid -- and it added up.
And is it true that a nurse who happened to be sitting was obliged
to stand when a doctor entered the room? Mrs.
ABDULLAH doesn't
pause. "You're darn right. If you didn't, you were disciplined."
Nurses were overworked, underpaid, and undervalued. So, Mrs.
ABDULLAH's
friend and colleague, Jean
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY, set out to change that -- but
not before she duly noted that the plight of nurses was not completely
the fault of management.
"I was concerned about the apathy of nurses at the time with
respect to working conditions," Mrs.
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY observed a few years
ago. "The nurses complained constantly over coffee and lunch
but didn't feel comfortable complaining to a higher authority.
They worried about losing their jobs. They didn't have the nerve
to take action. The question for me was, what could be done to
help the situation."
Fortunately for nurses in Ontario, Mrs.
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY had nerve to spare.
On October 13, 1973, in a landmark meeting in Toronto, more than
300 representatives of 85 independent nurses' organizations from
across the province joined forces to form the Ontario Nurses'
Association, with Mrs.
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY installed as founding president.
Just nine months later, after a brief but noisy labour dispute,
the Ontario Nurses' Association reached an 18-month agreement
with Queen's Park covering 10,000 registered nurses in 41 hospitals,
boosting starting salaries to $10,200 annually and maximum salaries
by a healthy 50 per cent.
Eventually, the union would bring together 104 separate nurses'
associations.
It was while working as a nurse herself that Mrs.
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY realized
many of her colleagues were unhappy with their hours, shift work,
low pay and lack of prestige. "When attempts to work with management
to set standards failed, she and others decided that collective
bargaining was the answer," related Ontario Nurses' Association
chief executive officer Lesley
BELL. "
Thousands of registered
nurses have benefited from her efforts since."
Mrs. LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY served two, one-year terms as president of the Ontario
Nurses' Association, today a powerful union representing more
than 51,000 registered nurses and allied health professionals
in hospitals, community health, long-term care, Canadian Blood
Services, clinics and industry. For 16 years, she worked at several
staff positions at the association, retiring in 1991 as an honorary
member.
For a time, she was also director and acting chair of the Ontario
Health Coalition.
Over the past 30 years, the Ontario Nurses' Association has spearheaded
great strides for nurses in pay, layoff provisions, overtime,
parental leave and recognition of previous experience, to name
a few areas.
Mrs. LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY would note with satisfaction the changes brought about
over the years, not only in the strength and power of the nursing
collective, but in how nurses regard themselves. "Today, nurses
don't hesitate to go up to the mike and speak their peace," she
said recently. "Nurses are now much better educated and know
how to achieve a particular goal, whether it concerns working
conditions or any other issue."
The eldest of six children born to farmers in the Caledon region
outside Toronto during the Depression, she was among 14 psychiatric
nursing graduates of the Ontario Hospital in Whitby in 1951,
finishing her studies on time despite a broken hip suffered in
a car accident. Six years later, she received her certification
in public health from the University of Toronto.
It was while nursing in the community-health sector that she
joined a committee formed to hear complaints about working conditions.
In the early 1960s, Mrs.
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY went to work for the Etobicoke
Health Department at a time when nurses in Peel and Halton counties
were beginning to form their own associations and gain certification
for the purpose of collective bargaining, which proved useful
when they did not get anticipated raises.
Given the low wages and status the job was saddled with in her
day, why did people -- women, back then -- enter the profession
at all?
"The prestige came from the satisfaction we got from making our
patients feel better," offers Mrs.
ABDULLAH. "
Adjusting a pillow,
washing somebody's face, cleaning their teeth, rubbing their
back, sitting and holding their hand, listening to them cry in
pain and trying to soothe them -- that's what made it all worthwhile."
So didn't Mrs.
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY and other nurses who entered the labour
end of things, locking horns with adversaries, miss that compassion?
"While you missed that gratification of being at a bedside, how
you rationalized [that] was you hoped that through your skills
and your activism, you were able to make a bigger contribution
to your profession," said Mrs.
ABDULLAH, who worked alongside
Mrs. LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY at the Ontario Nurses' Association for a decade.
Mrs. LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY's accomplishments were acknowledged in Ontario's legislature
earlier this month. George Smitherman, Minister of Health and
Long-Term Care, no stranger to the fortunes of nurses in the
province, said the profession today "can proudly claim to be
respected, strong and united. [Nurses] are, as they have always
been, the heart and soul of health care. Today, they are recognized
as such, which is something that they have not always been. Thousands
of nurses have benefited from the efforts made and the example
set by Jean
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY. As a result of that, hundreds and thousands
of patients have as well."
Another dimension to Jean
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY was her love of playing nickel
slots at casinos. "In the last few years, she played just from
her winnings," Mrs.
ABDULLAH smiles.
Lamentably, for a nurse, it was a long-time smoking habit that
resulted in the lung cancer that finally claimed her. "She said
to me a couple of weeks ago, 'Ironic isn't it'? recalled Mrs.
ABDULLAH.
" 'All the years I was a public-health nurse advising people
to quit smoking…' "
Jean Marilyn
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY was born in the Caledon region of Ontario
on September 23, 1931, and died in Toronto on April 3, 2006,
of lung cancer. She was 75. She leaves her long-time partner,
FredBarthel, daughter Marylin Bailey and son Paul
LOWERY/LOWREY/LOWRIE/LOWRY, two
grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-06-29 published
James CLARKE,
AnglicanClergyman (1920-2006)
For 35 years, he served the immense Diocese of the Arctic, toting
a gun and travelling by bush plane, canoe and dog team to administer
to his congregants
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
It's a safe bet that most members of the clergy don't visit their
flock toting a military-issue rifle, but in Canada's remote Arctic,
the firearm was standard equipment for Right Rev. James
CLARKE,
who knew how to use it. After all, it's difficult enough to save
souls without contending with marauding wolves and foxes.
Mr. CLARKE knew the Arctic well, and accepted its harshness with
equanimity. An Anglican clergyman who served the gargantuan Diocese
of the Arctic for 35 years and the Canadian Armed Forces for
another five, he was a trusted religious figure among Canada's
Inuit in an era of enormous cultural upheaval, a calming influence
at a time when Christian churches were wreaking havoc on native
peoples.
For one, he learned fluent Inuktitut (then called "Eskimo"),
translating hymns and portions of scriptures. He took part in
hunts. He and his family ate char, rabbit and caribou, and waited,
like everyone else, for the delivery of provisions by ship every
July. And while most ministers receive their congregants in a
church, Mr.
CLARKE sought his out any way he could: bush plane,
snowmobile, canoe, dog team, umiak (a kind of hunter's boat)
and by foot -- and slept in tents and igloos.
"The people had great respect for Jim. They loved him," said
RightRev.LarryROBERTSON, the suffragan (assistant) bishop
of the diocese, in a telephone interview from Inuvik. "He spoke
their language and he was accepted as one of the people."
Mr. CLARKE served in the world's largest Christian diocese. At
a mind-boggling four million square kilometres, the Anglican
Church of Canada's Diocese of the Arctic occupies more than one-third
of the country, a territory that stretches across four time zones,
from the Yukon to the tip of Labrador, and north of the 60th parallel
to Grise Fiord, the most northerly permanent civilian settlement
in the nation. It represents 15 times the land mass of Britain.
It is home to a dozen language groups, including Gwichin, Dogrib,
North and South Slavey, Cree, English and French, and three Inuit
dialects. The diocese's population today is barely 55,000, an
estimated two-thirds of whom are Anglican.
The son of an Anglican priest and a Presbyterian mother, Mr.
CLARKE
was drawn first to the military, joining the Queen's York Rangers
as a bugler on his 17th birthday. In 1943, he enlisted in the
Canadian army, receiving commando training and intensive German-language
instruction, and attained the rank of corporal.
After graduating from the University of Toronto with a B.A.,
Mr. CLARKE spent 1945 and 1946 in the Intelligence Corps attached
to the Allied Occupation Forces. His family says he spoke little
of that time, which likely involved helping in the de-nazification
of Europe.
Back home, the priesthood beckoned, and he graduated from Toronto's
Trinity College, was ordained a deacon and, in 1950, a priest.
He served briefly in the Calgary parish of St. Stephen's, and
then headed for a parish of the same name, this one a fair distance
away: Fort Chimo, Quebec, now called Kuujjuaq, in Nunavik.
Consisting of all points along Ungava Bay, the territory was
flecked with hundreds of inlets, bays and coves. He journeyed
from camp to camp, and in his first year, encountered one of
the many tragedies to befall aboriginal people: One-tenth of
the parish was wiped out by measles. "At one point, he conducted
12 funerals a day for three straight days," recalls his wife,
Ruth, who moved north to join him upon their marriage in 1958.
"He said he felt like falling into the grave himself."
But it was also a time of great joy. "A thing I remember, especially
from that first Christmas," Mr.
CLARKE later wrote, "was the
way the children went everywhere with their parents. Those families
were very closely knit, compared to the way we are civilizing
them into fragmentation now."
Asked why a young urban nursing graduate would move to a half-finished
wooden house where temperatures reached minus 50 degrees in the
winter and deerflies and mosquitoes swarmed in the brief summer,
his wife shrugs. "I was young and in love." And, she adds, there
was her husband's legendary wit. "For the first six months we
were married, I laughed so much, my sides ached."
Mr. CLARKE was appointed Archdeacon of Ungava in 1965, expanding
his domain to all of northern Quebec. Nine years later, he was
named executive archdeacon of the diocese, and the growing family
returned to Toronto, where he worked out of an office the Arctic
zone maintained.
In 1979, he was elected bishop suffragan of the Arctic diocese.
The clan returned north in 1984, this time, to the more cosmopolitan
Frobisher Bay, now Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut. They stayed
for three years while Mr.
CLARKE travelled far and wide.
His professional life drew to a close with the combination of
his two main passions: the church and the military. In 1986,
Ted SCOTT, then the primate of the Anglican Church of Canada,
named Mr. CLARKE as Bishop Ordinary to the Canadian Forces, an
office that oversaw all Anglican military chaplains. It was a
position he held until his retirement in 1991.
He continued to indulge his love of ham radio and his Scottish
heritage, becoming active in the Clan MacLeod Society of Central
Ontario. In the end, Alzheimer's robbed him of his wit and renowned
storytelling ability, but not his virtuoso whistling. That repertoire
continued with army tunes and nearly every hymn in the hymnal.
James Charles MacLeod
CLARKE was born in Campbellford, Ontario,
on December 15, 1920, and died in Toronto on April 28. He was
85. He leaves his wife Ruth (née Bradbury) and three children,
Matthew, Mark and Penina.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-07-21 published
Nathan MENDELSOHN,
Scholar (1917-2006)
Absent-minded polymath who taught mathematics at the University
of Manitoba for 57 years made his name in combinatorics, a dazzling
bit of science that no Sudoku puzzle can be without
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Toronto -- Nathan
MENDELSOHN may well have been the absent-minded
professor from central casting. He would go to work by car and
return home by bus. His wife would send him shopping and he would
come back with the wrong items ("I'll cook what he brings," she
once said with a shrug). And there was the time he took his family
to the movies and agreed to stand in the rain to buy the tickets
while his wife and two sons took shelter indoors. Prof.
MENDELSOHN
decided he didn't want to see the movie after all, so he drove
home.
Then there was the brilliant mathematician who saw beauty in
the abstract. The Order of Canada member who made his own furniture,
jewellery and wine, and delighted in performing hypnosis and
magic tricks. The one who never wrote anything down because he
didn't have to. With his sly sense of humour, he would appreciate
the designation of polymath.
Prof. MENDELSOHN taught mathematics at the University of Manitoba
for 57 years, ending his career in 2005 as distinguished professor
emeritus. He headed the math department for about 20 years, authored
140 research papers -- about double the average professor's career
output -- and was a leading light in a branch of pure mathematics
called combinatorics, which deals with the abstract relationships
of objects to each other. One application is the math that underlies
the popular Sudoku puzzles.
His and others' theories bore practical applications in such
areas as scheduling, cryptography and software testing, often
decades after they were promulgated. Helen, his wife of 62 years,
had another name for her husband's work: "dreamy mathematics"
(though she had no qualms pronouncing that she "really" hated
math).
Prof. MENDELSOHN worked in other fields of mathematics, including
computing and numerical analysis, graph and design theory, and
many branches of algebra. But it was combinatorics for which
he was best known.
"It is probably safe to say that there is not a combinatorialist
or universal algebraist in the world who has not heard of Nathan
MENDELSOHN, and that probably very few of them have not quoted
at least one of his papers or worked in an area of research which
he has helped develop," stated the Royal Society of Canada in
awarding the Henry Marshall Tory Medal to Prof.
MENDELSOHN in
Mathematics, he declared in a 1985 National Film Board short,
"is my vocation, my avocation, my hobby, my playground. I do
other things for relaxation -- I enjoy them -- but my greatest
pleasure is working with mathematical concepts."
He first encountered that pleasure in Grade 3 when he became
aware of two things: the power of immediate recall, and that
he knew more math than his teacher did without really trying.
His father, Sam, an ironworker, came to Toronto with his four
children in 1918 to join relatives after they had been burned
out of their tenement in Brooklyn. The clan settled on Euclid
Avenue, and its descendants note the connection to the ancient
Greek mathematician.
Young Nathan amused himself by taking apart clocks (usually putting
them back together). He was awarded a four-year scholarship to
the University of Toronto, where he completed bachelor's and
master's degrees and, in 1941, his doctorate.
While still an undergraduate, he belonged to the team that won
the William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, said to be
the toughest math test in the world. Meantime, he was advised
to take up magic as a way to calm tremors in his hands, and he
studied the hucksters and pitchmen at the Canadian National Exhibition.
His sleight of hand landed him second prize at an International
Brotherhood of Magicians contest, just behind a young amateur
named Johnny Carson.
But there was a war on, and Prof.
MENDELSOHN's talents were needed
in defence research. He was enjoined from talking about the work
he volunteered bits and pieces much later -- but his family
believes it involved code-breaking and artillery simulations,
continuing the age-old use of mathematics for military applications.
(A similar stint in the early 1960s at the Rand Corp. was even
more hush-hush.)
At war's end, he headed to Kingston, Ontario, to teach at Queen's
University, where he stayed for three years.
Asked about the short interval, his son, Eric, a professor of
math at the U of T, explained: "He understood that, as a Jew,
he would never get a permanent position. Queen's already had
a Jewish professor in the department."
So he settled in Winnipeg, where the University of Manitoba welcomed
any and all to build its fledgling math department, and where
Prof. MENDELSOHN became deeply involved in the city's vibrant
Jewish community. Raised in a modern Orthodox family, he was
drawn more to Judaism's teachings on morality than its ritual.
Evidence for the existence of God, he reasoned, was "circumstantial"
not quite enough for a scientist.
But with a salary of about $3,000 a year, he was forced to work
during the summers, driving to Quebec City with his family for
teaching jobs.
He first came to international notice after co-authoring a paper
in 1961 on Latin squares -- grids in which no two numbers may
appear in the same row or column (essentially a numeric Sudoku
puzzle.) Tough enough on a standard 9x9 grid -- but Prof.
MENDELSOHN
raised eyebrows by successfully constructing five pairs of 12x12
grids. Visualized in three dimensions, with each grid placed
over its pair, the numbers repeated neither in rows and columns
nor up and down. And it was all done without a computer.
"That was absolutely extraordinary," said Michael Doob, whom
Prof. MENDELSOHN hired to teach math at the University of Manitoba.
"He was known for idiosyncrasies, but he taught without any notes
at all. And I don't think he had a mean bone in his body. He
was a real mensch."
Prof. MENDELSOHN forged Friendships with some of the leading
names in the rarefied world of higher math, including the eccentric
Hungarian number theorist Paul Erdos, who made a habit of showing
up on fellow mathematicians' doorsteps unannounced and with no
money.
Prof. MENDELSOHN also built his own cabinets. "He'd make four
or five pieces of furniture and then stop," his son recalled.
"He was like that with math, too. He was more interested in finding
a new problem and solving it than worrying about one classical
problem."
Two modern theories bear Prof.
MENDELSOHN's name. Both of them,
said his son, are "just a genius's slight twist on an old idea
to get mathematics to give up one of her profound secrets."
Prof. MENDELSOHN guided graduate students until a year ago, and
he never stopped doodling on the proverbial napkin. The page
proofs for his last paper arrived the morning he died.
Nathan Saul
MENDELSOHN was born in New York on April 14, 1917.
He died in Toronto on July 4, 2006, of hepatitis C contracted
through tainted blood. He was 89. He leaves two siblings, two
sons, five grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. His wife
died in January of 2005.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-10-23 published
Gino EMPRY,
Agent And Publicist (1925-2006)
Brassy Toronto impresario with a 1,000-name roster of show-biz
clients was, deep down, a shy guy with a heart of gold, and a
regular churchgoer
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special to The Globe and Mail; Globe and Mail archives, Page S8
Toronto -- He spent one night with Pearl Bailey while the singer
talked about the sex life of a pomegranate until 3 a.m.
Marlene Dietrich gave him a wallet with blank cards inside after
spying him fishing around in his pockets for something to scribble
on. "You must always be chic," she cooed.
Tony Bennett once fixed him with a stare and asked menacingly,
"What the hell is that supposed to mean? Are you making fun of me?"
Phyllis Diller once sent him $500 to help pay for a nose job.
On the other hand, buxom Jane Russell took one look at that generous
schnozz and pronounced it "big enough to fit my cleavage."
Welcome to Gino
EMPRY's world.
Talent agent, impresario, boulevardier and flack-turned-friend
to dozens -- no darling, make that hundreds -- of stars, Mr.
EMPRY
was a throwback to an era when Public Relations men such as Irving
"Swifty" Lazar bent the ears of such make'em-or-break'em celebrity
scribes as Walter Winchell and Hedda Hopper.
For over 40 years, Mr.
EMPRY was a show-biz fixture in Toronto,
booking the talent at the fabled Imperial Room in the Royal York
Hotel, hyping his stable to pretty much anyone who listened,
befriending cops, doormen, tough guys and starving artists. Dubbed
the father of celebrity publicity in Canada, it's probably no
exaggeration to say he rubbed shoulders with every famous name
in, well, the Western Hemisphere.
His 1,000-name roster of clients included, at various times,
Mr. Bennett, Peggy Lee, Deborah Kerr, Cher, Jack Lemmon, Frank
Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Bob Hope, Eartha Kitt, Peter O'Toole
and, closer to home, Ronnie Hawkins, William Hutt, Karen Kain,
Anne Murray and Roch Voisine. The only person he regretted not
having worked with was Clark Gable. "But he's dead," Mr.
EMPRY
once observed. "Otherwise, I've met all the others."
His forte was the personal touch. "He and I hit it off quite
well," recalled Ms. Murray. "He was always so flamboyant and
we always had good laughs. He used to say to me, 'when are we
gonna have dinner?' And, of course, we never had dinner. But
every year he sent me a Christmas card -- every single year since
1971 -- and he handwrote on every one, 'when are we gonna have
dinner?' "
It was a God-given gift, he told The Globe and Mail in a 1996
spread. "That's why stars trust me and why they have done things
for me that they wouldn't do for other people."
Like the time he talked British singer Petula Clark into taking
over a laryngitis-stricken Mr. Bennett's Toronto gig on one day's
notice. Or when the Toronto police force "begged" Mr.
EMPRY to
get Hal Linden, then television's Captain Barney Miller, to appear
at one of their bashes. "He said yes to me, and I guess that's
partly why I have half the police force as my Friends," Mr.
EMPRY
recalled with satisfaction. "I just looove policemen."
And they loved him back. At his legendary parties, whether at
the Royal York or at his knick-knack-filled, white-carpeted,
shagadelic downtown pad, "half the Toronto police was there,
and that's one reason he could park anywhere at any time, no
questions asked," recalled Mary
JOLLIFFE, who served as the Stratford
Festival's first communications director. "He never paid a parking
ticket -- ever," confirmed Helga
STEPHENSON, a Toronto film promoter.
Mr. EMPRY was a character in a character's world. "People tell
me, 'Gino, you don't walk into a room, you make an appearance.'
" It was a trick he learned from Bernadette Peters. "She told
me once, 'Gino, do you know how you get the best table in a restaurant?
You walk to the front of the line and look imperious.' "
The look came naturally. The family name was
EMPERATORE, from
the Italian imperatore, meaning emperor or commander, or, to
Mr. EMPRY, of the Caesars. "And my police Friends tell me I am
like a Caesar, always ordering people around."
It was an unlikely trait for a pallid, elfin guy, barely 5 feet
6 inches (when not wearing his favourite two-inch heels), a Kim
Jong-il-style bouffant 'do, silk ascot, and jewellery -- lots
of it, as befitting someone with such distinguished roots. Around
his neck was a multicoloured ammolite pendant -- a gift, he said,
from Ella Fitzgerald. The heavy gold bracelet was from Tony Bennett,
the Mickey Mouse watch from Kay Ballard, the diamond pinky ring
from Glenda Jackson, and the goldfish charm from Lena Horne.
A chunky signet ring flashed the family coat of arms: a star
and a half-moon topped by a chivalric helmet, anchored by the
banner, "Emperatore." This bit of heraldry also adorned Mr.
EMPRY's
gold-embossed business cards.
At his zenith, he managed Mr. Bennett worldwide for a dozen years,
but not Robert Goulet, as has been reported. "Gino and I were
Friends," said Mr. Goulet on the phone. "He did Public Relations
for me in Canada. We loved him dearly." And then, he popped the
most hotly debated question about Mr.
EMPRY: "
How old was he?"
Told an estimate, Mr. Goulet seemed shocked. "Holy mackerel!
He never looked it."
LikeJackBenny plus a decade, Mr.
EMPRY was eternally 49. "I'm
not vain," he insisted. "I just go to great lengths to look better
than I am." He would say, with a straight face, that he was born
in 1949, though biographical material says he graduated from
the University of Toronto in 1961 at what would have been the
precocious age of 12 (one unconvinced wag quipped that Mr.
EMPRY
"seems to have represented everyone from Sir Wilfrid Laurier
to Ella Fitzgerald"). He was also coy about his credentials
those close to him say he had been a bona fide chartered accountant.
One thing that might surprise people who couldn't see beyond
the glitz -- Mr.
EMPRY was, deep down, a shy guy with a heart
of gold, and a regular churchgoer to boot.
"Everybody's talking about what a character he was and all the
stars he dealt with, but nobody has said how helpful he was to
a lot of unknowns... all the small companies starting out," said
Sylvia SHAWN, who was Mr.
EMPRY's partner for 20 years. "Whoever
asked for help, got it."
And it was a long list: the Actors Fund of Canada, the Canadian
Cancer Society, DareArts, Easter Seals, the Ontario Musical Arts
Centre, juvenile diabetes, Israel Bonds and the Variety Club
of Ontario, to name a few. In 1993, he received the city of Toronto's
highest honour, the Award of Merit, and three years later, was
guest of honour at a tribute from Famous People Players, the
renowned black-light theatre company, one of his favourite causes.
Long-time Imperial Room maitre d' Louis
JANNETTA, famous for
refusing Bob Dylan entrance because the singer wasn't wearing
a tie, recalled Mr.
EMPRY's creation of "Gypsy nights" -- when
the cover charge was dropped at the venue for young theatre unknowns.
"We allowed all the [local] theatres -- the Limelight, the Mousetrap,
Second City -- to come for the late show on Thursdays of opening
week without a cover charge." A lot of young artists came, John
Candy among them, and
to Mr. JANNETTA's consternation, their
dress was not up to the room's formal standards. "I provided
jackets for them," he noted. Mr.
EMPRY "was a genius in his own
right."
The eldest of nine children, Gino was the
son of Arturo
EMPERATORE,
who came to Canada from a rural region outside Rome, and Lucy
FLAMMINIO of Toronto, who was 15 when she gave birth to him.
The couple ran a small grocery store and butcher shop, where
the young Gino cut off the top of two of his fingers in a meat-slicing
machine.
Mr. EMPRY remembered being "wretchedly poor. We had to count
our pennies. In the Italian ghetto, there were gangsters and
rough types. I used to get beat up because I liked school. I
remember my mother telling me, 'There's more than one way to
fight a battle. Use your tongue.' So I learned to use my mouth
which is very useful in my business!"
He developed a love of the theatre while at Saint Mary of the Angels
Separate School in Toronto. He acted with Catholic youth groups
before joining an all-boys acting ensemble at Saint Michael's College.
"I played Portia and Juliet because I was small."
He had an uneasy relationship with his parents and left home
early. His father was distant at best. "My father was a wonderful
man, but very shy, and never a father figure to me. So I kept
looking for strong men to give me what I felt I needed -- authority.
Being of Caesarean heritage… I'm both a gladiator and a slave.
I'm a slave to my work and I'm a perfectionist. I insist on things
being done right. There are no loose ends with me."
His first job was as a night auditor for a trucking company.
Later, he worked as a systems analyst for a transportation firm,
while appearing in some 50 amateur theatre productions, including
what he'd refer to as his best performance -- in Teahouse of
the August Moon. But he yearned for more, and plunked down $2,000
for a career consultant, who advised him to take two years to
get a toehold in entertainment. Mr.
EMPRY wrote hundreds of letters
to radio producers, theatre owners -- anyone who might give him
a break.
It happened in 1964, when the contacts he'd made at the Ontario
DramaLeague led him to Ed
MIRVISH of Honest Ed's discount store
fame. Mr. MIRVISH needed a boost for his recently purchased Royal
Alexander Theatre. To compete, it had to draw the big names away
from the rival O'Keefe Centre, and Mr.
EMPRY was hired. Emboldened,
he formed his own booking and public-relations agency. "I started
at the top," he said later. "You couldn't get any better than
the Royal Alex at the time. I got $100 a week." Things only improved
when the Irish Rovers signed him as their international publicist.
In 1970, he became entertainment director/Public Relations consultant
for the 500-seat Imperial Room, then the country's top nightclub.
In addition to A-list celebs, he booked female impersonators
and Las-Vegas-style revues. Mr. Bennett, among the top acts,
insisted on the same suite at the Royal York, one that faced
east fronting the gilded Royal Bank Tower (the crooner's paintings
adorned the walls of Mr.
EMPRY's condo.) Count Basie was "the
very essence of cool." Raquel Welch was "pretty, but not glamorous."
Mr. EMPRY and dancer Cyd Charisse used "to sit for hours talking
about everything under the sun… I never got tired of looking
at those incredible legs."
TheImperialRoom closed in 1989 and in 1991, Mr.
EMPRY was abruptly
dismissed from the
MIRVISH account by Honest Ed's son, David.
He soldiered on with corporate shilling, including for Playboy
magazine in Canada. Three years ago, he couldn't have bought
juicier publicity than when he orchestrated a handshake and chit-chat
between Aline Chrétien, prim wife of the then-prime-minister,
and Tailor James, a well-endowed Toronto-born Playmate of the
Month. Organizers of the charity event were miffed, but it got
tongues wagging. The news media took note, but dismissed it as
"a tempest in a D cup."
More recently, Mr.
EMPRY farmed himself out, perhaps tongue-in-cheek,
as "the Happiness Guru" ($100 for a one-hour session), inspired
by sultry singer Peggy Lee, who referred to Mr.
EMPRY in her
autobiography by that 1960s tag. When he asked why, she replied:
"Think about it, Gino. We are considered as stars in the entertainment
industry but we are misused, abused, taken advantage of and left
stranded in embarrassing situations that have nothing to do with
what we really are all about.
"Along comes baby-faced Gino
EMPRY, and he really cares. He understands
our concerns, our worries and our needs. Even more important,
he doesn't pander to the vanities we parade to our unsuspecting
fans. He seems to know our weaknesses and treats them with love
and respect. He really loves us!"
He really did. "He was very good to his clients, very loyal,"
Ms. JOLIFFE said. "He often worked around the clock for them."
Of course, there was his dark side. "To know Gino was, at one
point, to have had a fight with him," said Ms. Stephenson. "He
could be infuriating one moment and endearing the next."
A temper that fuelled more than a few thrown telephones got him
into hot water in 1989 after an altercation with a woman in the
lobby of the building that housed his million-dollar condo. The
judge didn't buy his plea of self-defence, and he was fined $1,000.
"I haven't used a lawyer since," he said, years later.
The appearance of Mr.
EMPRY's memoirs was a foregone conclusion.
He wanted to call them You Star, Me Gino, but the 2002 volume
was titled I Belong to the Stars, a collection of piquant tales
ranging from procuring hashish for Peter O'Toole, to getting
Cher an Eaton's credit card, to fending off the advances of Xaviera
(the Happy Hooker) Hollander.
Last year, he corralled support from musicians and performers
in Toronto in an event to shine a light on increased gun violence
in the city. This past summer, it was rumoured that he was working
on a bash to celebrate the city's burgeoning Chinese population.
Mr. EMPRY never married, not even to his companion of 20 years,
psychic Nikki
PEZARO. He knew he occasionally rivalled the celebrity
of some of his clients but "I'm a person in my own right, so
why not?"
Gino EMPRY was born in Toronto on, it is believed, October 11,
1925, and died there on October 14, 2006, after suffering complications
from a stroke that occurred in July. He was 81.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-10-26 published
Henry Clifford
HATCH,
LiquorDistiller (1916-2006)
He followed in his father's footsteps and took a business built
on supplying bootleggers and turned it into a roaring success
called Hiram Walker
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Toronto -- Was Scottish whisky maker Tommy Dewar thinking of
Henry Clifford
HATCH when he said "success is merely a matter
of buying your experience cheap and selling it at a profit"?
Cliff HATCH followed in his father's footsteps as head of Hiram
Walker, Canada's second-largest liquor distiller (after Seagram),
and made the liquor trade in this country as respectable as it
could get. That wasn't always easy, given that the
HATCH family
rose to prominence in the heyday of bootlegging in the United
States.
But through business practices that may now seem quaint, harkening
to a time when a person's word was his bond, Mr.
HATCH cemented
an upstanding reputation through tough but always civil competition,
anchored by his deep Roman Catholic faith.
Besides, he sure sold some fine hooch, namely, the ubiquitous
Canadian Club rye whisky, Ballantine's Scotch, Kahlua and Tia
Maria liqueurs, and Courvoisier cognac.
In many ways, Mr.
HATCH's career paralleled that of the other
great Canadian liquor barons, the
BRONFMANs and their signature
brand, Seagram. Mr.
HATCH's father, Harry, was archrivals with
the BRONFMAN patriarch, Sam, but only in business. Cliff
HATCH,
notes his son, chaired Mr. Sam's 80th birthday party in 1971.
Mr. HATCH also had kind things to say when the
BRONFMAN family's
Fairview Corp. entered into a 50-50 partnership with the Toronto-Dominion
Bank to build the Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower in downtown Toronto.
At the time, he was serving on the bank's board.
Mr. HATCH was remembered as a gentleman both in and out of the
boardroom. A favourite
son of Windsor, Ontario, where Hiram Walker and
Sons Ltd. still fronts the Detroit River, he gave generously
to a variety of charitable and civic causes. On his retirement,
Hiram Walker employed 5,000 people worldwide, and annual profits
were $250-million (U.S.).
"He was a wonderful fellow, an industry leader and a good friend,"
said Charles
BRONFMAN. "My father and Harry
HATCH had a great
feud going for many years, but they built great businesses, so
Cliff HATCH and I could afford to compete as Friends. I told
him there's nothing I enjoyed more than switching somebody from
Canadian Club to [Seagram's] V.O. and he laughed and said, 'There's
nothing I enjoy more than the reverse.' Neither of us wanted
to put the other out of business. We worked as competitors, and
as very good Friends.
"But much more important to me, frankly, he was a fine human
being."
The groundwork was laid by Mr.
HATCH's father during Prohibition
in the United States. His father had tended bar in some tough
saloons in eastern Ontario and ran a liquor store in Whitby,
Ontario Harry
HATCH made his money, though, first by going into
the mail-order booze business and then by coming to the attention
of Montreal tobacco-and-liquor magnate Sir Mortimer Davis, who
hired the young go-getter as sales manager at his Corby whisky
plant. Within two years, production went from 500 gallons a month
to 50,000 gallons.
Historian Bill Hunt, author of Booze, Boats and Billions, relates
that, at about the same time, Sir Mortimer paid Mr.
HATCH $1
for every case of whisky he could sell to American bootleggers.
Mr. HATCH, his brother Herb, and future distiller Larry
McGUINESS
recruited a fleet of fisherman to ferry the liquid gold through
the Thousand Islands in an operation that came to be known as
"Hatch's Navy."
Harry HATCH prospered and, in 1923, he and some Toronto investors
paid $1.5-million for the idle Gooderham and Worts, which had been
the country's largest distiller. Three years later, the descendants
of Hiram WALKER, a Detroit grain merchant and father of Canadian
Club whisky who died in 1899, sold the family concern to the
elder Mr. HATCH for $14-million. Mr.
HATCH merged his companies
into Hiram Walker-Gooderham and Worts, headquartered in Walkerville,
Ontario, now part of Windsor, and was dubbed "the king of Canadian
distillers."
By the time Prohibition was repealed in 1933, the elder Mr.
HATCH
had built the world's biggest distillery in Peoria, Illinois,
capable of producing 50 million gallons of whisky a year. In
1937, he acquired Ballantine's Scotch Whisky, and just before
the Second World War, built a huge distillery in Dumbarton, Scotland.
His son, meantime, had been sent to boarding school in Montreal
to learn French. He was 8. After high school at Saint Michael's
CollegeSchool in Toronto, Mr.
HATCH considered studying for
the Catholic priesthood. But, at his father's urging, he became
a travelling salesman, at 17, for the T.G. Bright wine company,
which the senior Mr.
HATCH bought in 1933. Four years later,
his son moved to Windsor to begin his ascent at Hiram Walker.
In 1940, the younger Mr.
HATCH personally received a British
royal warrant from Lord Chamberlain at Buckingham Palace for
Hiram Walker to purvey its goods in the Royal Court.
Also that year, Mr.
HATCH enlisted with the Royal Canadian Navy.
He served in corvettes on convoys that escorted fighting ships
across the treacherous North Atlantic. It was dangerous work:
At the height of the U-boat campaign, as many as half of the
ships were sunk.
Mr. HATCH served on three escorts. He was lieutenant commander
on H.M.C.S. Napanee and captain on H.M.S.C. Drummondville and
on H.M.C.S. Ville de Quebec. While leaving Halifax Harbour one
day, a semaphore message signalled him that his wife, Joan, had
given birth to a son two weeks earlier.
He saw the worst of war up close but kept a stoic silence, recalled
H. Clifford
HATCHJr.Instead, "his stories about the war were
funny. He never talked about death and horror and the number
of men he saw die."
Harry HATCH died in 1946. Author Peter C. Newman relates in his
book The Bronfman Dynasty that, a few weeks later, the
HATCH
family received a "sizable" offer for their controlling interest
in Hiram Walker-Gooderham and Worts that was believed to have come
from the BRONFMANs. It was turned down flat.
Cliff HATCH, meantime, built on his father's innovations. Brands,
for example, had come to be an important aspect of whisky marketing
and, following Prohibition and the Second World War, consumers
restored their loyalties to Canadian Club and labels such as
Imperial. In the area of merchandising, Hiram Walker was the
first to gift-wrap its liquor.
Unlike the generation that succeeded him, Mr.
HATCH never attended
university, save for a six-week executive training course in
New York in the 1950s. He was crowned company president and Chief
Executive Officer in 1964, and among his first tasks was the
acquisition of Courvoisier cognac.
He also engineered the purchase of the company's most profitable
brand, Kahlua coffee liqueur. Company policy was to buy fewer
labels and concentrate on marketing them.
Of course, tasting was important. Mr.
HATCH would sample the
goods personally, "always before lunch because that's when your
taste buds are most active... about 11 o'clock in the morning,"
says his son, who also became president and Chief Executive Officer
of Hiram Walker-Gooderham and Worts.
Mr. HATCH became company chairman in the late 1970s, and, in
1980, he initiated the merger between Hiram Walker Gooderham and
Worts and Consumers' Gas Co. of Toronto to fend off a rival's
bid for the liquor concern. A corporate shuffle in 1982 returned
him as president and Chief Executive Officer following the $630-million
(U.S.) acquisition of oil and gas properties in the United States
from Davis Oil Co. of Denver. Hiram Walker stumbled badly when
it was discovered that the properties held much less proved and
probable oil reserves than originally thought.
Mr. HATCH announced his retirement in 1984. But, when the Reichmann
family of Toronto launched a $3-billion hostile takeover bid
in 1986 for the renamed Hiram Walker Resources Ltd., the company
sold the liquor subsidiary to Allied-Lyons PLC, based in
Britain. Mr.
HATCH finally retired in 1987.
Today, Hiram Walker is owned by the French firm Pernod Ricard
as a result of that company's acquisition last year of Allied
Domecq, and the various brands have been parcelled out. Hiram
Walker and Sons Ltd. on Riverside Drive in Windsor still produces
and bottles Canadian Club, sold in more than 150 countries, and
several other labels, but it's all under contract to Kentucky-based
Jim Beam. Its latest offering is pomegranate schnapps.
Mr. HATCH left several major legacies in Windsor, despite having
moved back to Toronto in 1994 to be closer to his children and
grandchildren: He was founding chair of the Greater Windsor Community
Foundation, which has supported the Basilian Fathers and the
Art Gallery of Windsor. The Joan and Clifford Hatch Foundation
has donated substantial sums to women's legal aid, Scouts Canada,
and L'Arche Canada. And the Joan and Clifford Hatch Wildflower
Garden commemorates the couple's contributions to the city's
riverfront and parks system.
In a particularly long struggle -- from 1938 to about 1980 --
Mr. HATCH was involved in efforts to remove rail lines from Windsor's
waterfront.
Like his own father, Mr.
HATCH was a taciturn man who shunned
the limelight. He made no public statements on the demise of
the company his father founded. He never missed Sunday mass.
"My father was very old-fashioned," said H. Clifford
HATCHJr.
"He believed that good business was good for both sides. He believed
his word was his bond. He always believed in never doing anything
in the short term that would hurt the business in the longer
term. And he believed that people made a big difference."
Henry Clifford
HATCH was born in Toronto on April 30, 1916, and
died there on September 23, 2006, of cancer. He was 90. His wife,
Joan, died in 2004. He leaves four children -- Cliff, Gail, Mary
and Rick -- nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-11-02 published
McKenzie PORTER,
Journalist (1911-2006)
Deliberately outrageous or outrageously deliberate, he was a
Toronto Sun columnist who loved to upset sacred cows and apple
carts. 'He had a forked tongue in both cheeks simultaneously'
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- Erudite windbag. Pontificating right-wing snob. Upper-class
Brit-twit monarchist loudmouth. Racist and misogynist. He'd heard
them all, and they all rolled right off his tweeded back. Whatever
else was said of him -- some of it unprintable -- McKenzie
PORTER
was either a fearless pricker of balloons who shot from the lip,
or he was putting us on.
Turns out it was healthy dollops of both. In any case, he was
the very personification of political incorrectness decades before
the term was coined.
An incorrigible columnist for 19 years at the Toronto Sun --
whose 35th anniversary yesterday the Globe herewith graciously
acknowledges -- and for its predecessor, the storied Toronto
Telegram, Mr.
PORTER was the master of elegant invective and
purple phraseology. To say he was irrepressible or irreverent
would be clichéd folderol, the kind he abhorred. A small sampling
(with apologies all around):
Most feminists were "deservedly cast-off wives, pseudo-intellectual
frumps and incurable lesbians, a vociferous motley of shrews,
viragos, prudes and charlatans."
Many homosexuals "no longer are satisfied with acceptance and
freedom from prosecution. They now seek approval, acclaim and
authority."
All his "known enemies" were "pseudo-intellectuals, artistic
charlatans and specious socialists with cunning eyes, avaricious
inclinations, flaccid bodies, theatrical garments and ignoble
records of service to Queen and country."
Any man who avoids household duties as "women's work" and cannot
sew a button, boil an egg, operate a vacuum or scour a saucepan
was "a sexist despot."
Was that last one the proverbial pot calling the kettle black?
Who knows?
"One could never be sure whether
PORTER was spoofing or serious,
writing for real or effect," recalled his some-time boss at the
Sun, Peter
WORTHINGTON, in a 1999 column of his own. "Whatever,
indisputably, he was the most graceful and stylish writer in
the business."
One contemporary ended an interview some 30 years ago by wondering
whether Mr.
PORTER was being deliberately outrageous or outrageously
deliberate. He finally decided that being preposterous was "a
way of life" for the columnist… "even when
PORTER is kidding,
he's not kidding."
As in a column under the headline "Body Hygiene," in which he
fulminated that defecating in the men's room at the office, while
reading a newspaper, was "not merely theft of one's employer's
time but often, an offence to the eyes, ears and nose of one's
colleagues." It was vintage stuff and became a collector's item.
TheSun later ran a photo of a regal Mr.
PORTER, enjoying that
day's edition while ensconced on a commode. The picture was republished
in the American humour magazine, National Lampoon.
Mr. WORTHINGTON recalled a man who revered good manners, was
unfailingly courteous and gentlemanly, and fiercely denied being
a snob ("There are few flavours I enjoy more than snob blood,"
Mr. PORTER insisted.) The closer he got to the truth, the more
outrageous he seemed. And accusations of racism were false, Mr.
WORTHINGTON
felt; they merely reflected Mr.
PORTER's elitism.
"He was a cartoonist who used words," said his son, Tim, a one-time
reporter and public relations man. "People thought he was snooty,
but he was sending up people he thought were snooty. He had a
forked tongue in both cheeks simultaneously. He kicked uphill."
Born into a mercantile family in England, Mr.
PORTER was smitten
by journalism when he encountered a reporter who was boarding
at the clan's 20-room house. A cub reporter's job at the Manchester
Evening Chronicle lasted two years, followed by a stint at the
northern edition of the Daily Express, where he covered Hitler's
early stirrings and the Spanish Civil War. Then came Fleet Street
and the Daily Mirror, where, at 25, Mr.
PORTER became news editor
with 75 reporters under him, and where he helped break the story
of Edward VIII's abdication. He would later concede that
he had been spoiled by his quick success.
A fight with his editor resulted in a move to the Beaverbrook-owned
Evening Standard as a film Critic. It didn't last. Lord Beaverbrook,
the Canadian-born Max Aitken, loved corny movies and expected
Mr. PORTER to share his tastes. A 1978 Sun profile of Mr.
PORTER
related that the end came when the press baron's valet called
to say his master had enjoyed the latest Ritz Brothers comedy.
Mr. PORTER buttonholed an editor and gave precise directions
as to where His Lordship could put the movie.
Briefly, he wrote for the Daily Sketch, and was upbraided by
an executive for beginning a story, "If all the civil servants
in Lytham Saint Annes were laid end to end, I would be surprised."
When war came, Mr.
PORTER could have signed up to flak for the
armed services, as many reporters did. After all, the job was
safe and it paid well. Instead, he enlisted as a private and
gave up a salary of £1,500 a year for two shillings a day.
He began as a rifleman in the London Irish Rifles and after being
commissioned, served with the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) in
Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Along the way, he won a commission
and in Calabria, Italy, in 1943, led a charge against a Nazi
position. "As my platoon piper ceased his blood-curdling, enemy-demoralizing
overture to hand-to-hand combat, we trotted into the final assault,"
he wrote in his inimitable style, years later. "Firing rifles
and submachine guns from the hip and yelling and bawling like
barbarians on the threshold of ancient Rome, we noticed that
the cheeks of the Panzers became almost as pale as the whites
of their eyes.
"Of course, the Panzers ran away. Who wouldn't in the circumstances?
And they left behind on army cookers a sizzling array of mouth-watering
breakfast sausages, new black bread, fresh figs and real coffee."
He took four bullets in the Battle for Cassino, and was awarded
the Military Cross from King George VI. He ended the war
as a major and then spent three years as a Paris correspondent
for English newspapers, one of them under Ian Fleming of James
Bond fame ("a very poor journalist," he said.) Fed up with post-war
rationing, he arrived in Canada in 1948.
A self-confessed "remorselessly gluttonous carnivore," he insisted
that the following happened: While sharing a drink with a public
relations man, the latter inquired why Mr.
PORTER had chosen
Canada. "
Well,"
Mr.PORTER replied, not entirely in jest, "it
was mainly because of the meat." The result was a long-running
advertising slogan for the Dominion supermarket chain.
Soon after his arrival, Mr.
PORTER began writing for Maclean's
magazine. June Callwood, at the time a fresh freelancer, recalled,
with noticeable warmth in her voice, a man who was "openly racist,
sexist [and] snobbish both intellectually and socially. He was
just atrocious, to a point where you weren't sure he wasn't doing
a caricature."
Which he probably was, Ms. Callwood allowed. "He really did have
a heart of gold. He was kind of adorable [and] had a huge amount
of charm. I'll never forget the pomposity, but it had to be a
joke."
Mr. PORTER authored a biography of Queen Victoria's father, Prince
Edward, Duke of Kent. In 1962, he moved to the Toronto Telegram
where he pounded out columns and arts criticism, and almost proved
too hot for publisher John
BASSETT.
Editors killed about one
of his columns a month, but when a libel suit was lost over one
that slipped by, Mr.
BASSETT could not bring himself to fire
a decorated war veteran.
At the Tely, he crossed swords with fellow writer Pierre Berton,
who never forgave him for openly mocking the "Sordman's Club,"
a group of high-profile men who took other men's wives to monthly
lunches.
The late Charles Templeton, evangelist and one-time Toronto Star
editor who referred to Mr.
PORTER as "a professional Englishman,"
recalled in his memoirs that Mr.
PORTER greeted him at their
first meeting with: "Well, Templeton, how are things with God
these days?"
In October of 1971, Mr.
BASSETT decided to fold the Telegram,
even though it remained profitable. In response, a group of employees,
Mr. PORTER among them, hatched a plan to launch a tabloid replacement.
On November 1 of that year, with Douglas
CREIGHTON as publisher
and Peter WORTHINGTON as editor, the first Toronto Sun hit the
streets.
At the Sun, Mr.
PORTER continued in his characteristic, immoderate
manner. His file thickened over a 1989 column in which he wrote
that Italian-Canadians were using methods "alien to British practice"
to gain political power, and therefore, no Canadian citizen born
outside Canada should be allowed to vote in any elections or
stand for office. That earned him an acid rebuke in Ontario's
legislature and the City of Toronto withdrew its advertising
in the Sun, valued at $40,000 a year. Stung by accusations of
censorship, the city lifted its ban two months later.
He retired, reluctantly, in 1990, and went about parodying himself
better than anyone could in freelance travel articles, essays
and commentaries for The Globe. Whether it was folding his lanky,
vaguely David Niven-ish self under a Japanese dining table or
losing a shoe in a raging English rainstorm or flying to London
to get a new ferrule (cap) placed on the tip of his walking stick,
the copy was always in Technicolor.
Journalism was good to him. "A millionaire's life on a beggar's
income," he once boasted. His son confirmed a similar motto.
"Scribbling: Sure beats working."
John McKenzie
PORTER was born in Accrington, England, on October 21,
1911, and died of natural causes in Toronto on October 21, 2006,
on his 95th birthday. His wife, Kathleen, died in 1985, He leaves
a son, Tim, and two granddaughters. A family memorial is planned
for a later date.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-11-09 published
Theodore STEIN,
HolocaustSurvivor: (1918-2006)
Successful immigrant bore no ill will toward Canada even though
it refused entry to his parents, who died in the camps
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲▼ to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Theodore (Ted)
STEIN's life began to unravel 68 years ago tonight.
Of course, there had been stark warnings that went mostly unheeded.
This Hitler is just a nut; he will pass. We are Austrians, after
all, and secular. We will be all right. You'll see.
The delusion that gripped countless others in Vienna's 170,000-strong
Jewish community had seeped its way into the
STEIN household,
despite the fact that by the autumn of 1938, the Nazi swastika
flew in every corner of the city. It had been eight months since
the Anschluss ingested Austria into the Third Reich.
The beginning of the end for Mr.
STEIN -- indeed, all European
Jewry -- took place on the night of November 9, 1938, when Nazi
storm troopers and local hooligans, emboldened by news of the
assassination of a German official in Paris -- by a Jew -- took
to the streets. In dozens of German and Austrian cities, synagogues
were torched and the windows of Jewish-owned homes and businesses
smashed. The event would take its name from the terrifying scenes
on the formerly grand boulevards: Kristallnacht -- the Night
of Broken Glass.
Officials arrested some 6,000 Austrian Jews, deporting them to
Dachau.Among them was Mr.
STEIN's father, Jacob. Only those
who promised to emigrate immediately, leaving their property
behind, were released. Twenty-seven Austrian Jews were murdered
in the pogrom.
Mr. STEIN, then a 20-year-old man-about-town who frequented the
theatre and opera, was arrested on the steps of his family's
flat and hauled to a local school for processing. An SS sergeant
put him in charge of stoking a wood stove. Mr.
STEIN bent over
to do so. "You showed your ass to me!" the Nazi bellowed, and
proceeded to administer a ferocious beating to the young man.
A few minutes later, the same thing happened. The scenario played
out several more times before the officer relented.
The STEINs had been highly assimilated, acculturated and were
well-to-do merchants who had owned two lighting-fixture shops
in Vienna before they were confiscated. Regina
STEIN, the clan's
matriarch, bribed officials to get her husband out of Dachau
and her son into Switzerland. Her daughter had already escaped
to Palestine.
TheSwiss promptly dumped Mr.
STEIN back into Austria. But his
luck changed just two weeks before the Second World War broke
out in September, 1939, when he was among thousands of Jewish
refugees taken in by Britain.
In London, he worked briefly for British intelligence, transcribing
German messages that were later decoded.
Back in Vienna, Mr.
STEIN's parents were desperate. They wrote
to officials in Canada, reporting that they had been "left without
means of assistance and with no possibility of earning a living."
They were stateless and penniless and begged to come to this
country. "Our distress… increases daily and there is nothing
left for us but suicide.… Our only hope for survival is admission
to Canada."
But, as detailed in the book None is Too Many, from which the
above quote is taken, Ottawa's policy on admitting Jewish refugees
was dismal, and the
STEINs were turned down. Regina
STEIN perished
at Treblinka, her husband at Auschwitz.
Their son, meanwhile, was admitted to Canada in the summer of
1940 as a friendly prisoner of war, and he spent four years in
an internment camp outside Quebec City. He was then sent to work
on a farm near Hamilton, but hated it, and said as much to a
stranger who picked him up while hitchhiking. The man drove Mr.
STEIN
to Toronto, where he was lent $35 by the United Jewish Refugee
and War Relief Agency.
He lived in an unheated ground-floor apartment and worked at
a plastics company for $13 a week. "Too much to die, too little
to live," said his wife of 60 years, Patricia. He spent the next
20 years in a series of business ventures, including children's
clothing and hosiery, before finding a place in real estate at
the age of 50.
"He had a flair for it," remarked his wife. "He was tenacious,
you know. But boy, did he work hard."
Like many who survived that era, Mr.
STEIN was resolutely determined
to make it in the country that took him in, despite the fact
that Canada admitted a paltry 5,000 Jewish refugees from 1933 to
1945. "He harboured no ill will," said his son, Jeffrey. "He
loved Canada."
The family is now busy wading through a small mound of war-era
documents, many emblazoned with the Nazi eagle-and-swastika rubber
stamp, and some in the name of "Theodore Israel
SZTEYN," referencing
the middle name the Nazis forced Jews to take (it was Sarah for
women).
"My father never regarded himself as a victim," his son said.
"He used to say that if the Holocaust hadn't happened, he would
have become a bum. He said the Holocaust made him a man."
Theodore STEIN was born in Vienna on August 13, 1918. He died
in Toronto of Parkinson's Disease on October 22. He was 88. He
leaves his wife Patricia, son Jeffrey and four grandchildren.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-11-21 published
Bruce DUNCAN,
Conservationist (1946-2006)
General manager of the Hamilton Conservation Authority haunted
Ontario's Niagara escarpment and was a prolific contributor to
books and articles on hawks and eagles
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special to the Globe and Mail, Page S9
Toronto -- Not even his own wedding could interfere with Bruce
Duncan's love of birds and nature. His 1992 marriage to fellow
hawk bander Janet
SNAITH took place at Hawk Cliff, a prime hawk-watching
bluff overlooking Lake Erie, near Port Stanley, Ontario As Peter
WHELAN, the Globe's late birder columnist duly noted at the time,
the bride and groom wore binoculars. So did the guests and minister,
who had been forewarned the ceremony might be interrupted to
observe any interesting birds of prey.
Fifteen minutes before the nuptials, a peregrine falcon portentously
circled overhead, but no hawk of note interrupted the "I do's."
The next morning, Mr.
DUNCAN's new wife helped him capture the
first peregrine falcon in his 16 years of banding.
Among Canada's leading naturalists and experts on raptors, or
birds of prey, Mr.
DUNCAN was a passionate conservationist and
outdoorsman who loved to teach schoolchildren in and around Hamilton
about the plant and animal life in their surroundings. He was
a prolific contributor to books and scholarly articles on eagles,
hawks and natural history in Ontario.
Mr. DUNCAN was general manager and chief administrative officer
of the Hamilton Conservation Authority. "Bruce was in charge
of a $15-million organization and would not carry a cell phone,"
noted Chris
FIRTH-
EAGLAND, chairman of the authority. "He so
trusted and respected his staff that he wanted them to deal with
the issues. He was very hardworking and dedicated and was always
pursuing better environmental approaches to doing business, remediating
properties and acquiring new lands to protect them."
Normally a quiet, self-effacing man, Mr.
DUNCAN had recently
been flying high. On October 23, Ontario gifted to the conservation
authority a 180-acre parcel of land in upper Stoney Creek, west
of Hamilton, called the Eramosa Karst (a geological formation
where surface water erodes soft limestone and creates underground
streams and caverns). It is considered an environmentally significant
property; the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources designated
the lands an area of natural and scientific interest in 2003.
Two weeks later, a beaming Mr.
DUNCAN emceed the ceremony at
which Heritage Green Community Trust announced a $1.5-million
donation, which he had negotiated, to the Hamilton Conservation
Foundation for the development of the karst lands as the city's
newest conservation area.
"Elation couldn't describe how he had been feeling in the last
couple of weeks for bringing those two things together," Mr.
FIRTH-
EAGLAND
said. "There's no higher end for us than to acquire new land
and open it up for recreation, education and different functions."
Mr. DUNCAN joined the authority in 1988 to run its outdoor education
program. He would take schoolchildren on nature hikes through
the Dundas Valley. In 1992, he became the Hamilton Conservation
Authority's staff ecologist, and a decade later, was named director
of watershed planning and engineering, a post in which he was
responsible for the flood warning and response system. He became
the authority's general manager in January of 2004, and embarked
on an ambitious five-year strategic plan.
The authority will mark its 50th anniversary in 2008, and the
karst acquisition and donation were fine advance centrepieces.
"You can image the satisfaction that our organization felt --
that he felt -- [at] already having this 50th anniversary birthday
present all wrapped up, all secured, all ready," Mr.
FIRTH-
EAGLAND
said.
Born in post-war England to a British mother and Scottish-born
member of the Canadian army's medical corps, Mr.
DUNCAN grew
up in Orillia, Ontario He graduated with a psychology degree
from Wilfred Laurier University and spent the next three years
as a guide at the Quetico Provincial Park west of Thunder Bay,
providing instruction in canoeing, trekking and wilderness lore.
The experience was life-changing. He returned to the University
of Waterloo to study biology and then worked for 11 years for
the Grand River Conservation Authority as a resource interpreter
at the Taquanyah Nature Centre near Cayuga, where he established
himself as a raptor expert. He supervised the introduction of
bald eagles to southern Ontario, and helped introduce peregrine
falcons in the Hamilton area.
But it was on hawks Mr.
DUNCAN was considered an expert. "He
was a self-confessed hawk nut," said Debbie
DUNCAN, his sister-in-law.
"He had a life-long passion for sharing knowledge and enthusiasm
for nature. He was always leading hikes and workshops."
Mr. DUNCAN served as president of both the 500-member Hamilton
Naturalist Club and the Ontario Bird Banding Association. He
personally banded the legs of thousands of predatory birds to
track their migration habits, enduring little more than the usual
talon stabs and scratches. He named one of "his" bald eagles
Gustav Mahler, for his favourite composer. His friend and co-birder
of 30 years, Bob
CURRY, recalls that Mr.
DUNCAN came close to
tears when he discovered that Gustav had been shot and killed
over Lac-Saint-Jean, Quebec
"He was a gentleman and a gentle man," Mr.
CURRY recalled. "He
never raised his voice, but managed to influence people."
In 1991, Mr.
DUNCAN founded the Niagara Peninsula Hawk Watch
program, which monitors the migration of hawks, eagles, falcons
and vultures over the Niagara Escarpment.
Nicknamed "the Fox" for his red hair, Mr.
DUNCAN was a First
World War buff who read avidly. "He consumed everything," said
his wife, Janet. "If something caught his interest, he wasn't
satisfied until he'd read a dozen books on the subject."
He indulged his Scottish heritage once a year when the family
hosted a Robbie Burns night at their house (once the home of
AlexanderGrahamBell.) Mr.
DUNCAN would don a kilt and dress
a mean haggis. In the warm weather, when not out trekking and
communing, he would sit in a lawn chair, imported beer in one
hand and requisite binoculars in the other. In the winter, he
delighted neighbours by building snowmen and snowdogs.
There were frequent family outings with Janet and two young children.
"We were always going somewhere," Janet said, "somewhere different,
and experiencing new things."
Mr. DUNCAN received many honours for his work, including Hamilton's
Environmentalist of the Year Award in 1992, the Canada 125 Award
for Environmental Service to the Community, and a 1997 accolade
from the Hawk Migration Association of North America.
As for the stereotypical image of Hamilton as a gritty steel
town with little regard for conservation or the environment,
Mr. DUNCAN extolled the region as having more waterfalls than
any community in North America, and more escarpment lands and
green space per capita than any other Canadian city -- and he
wanted to keep it that way, said Mr.
FIRTH-
EAGLAND. "
Bruce had
a different feeling about Hamilton. He felt that Hamilton was
blessed."
And as the Hamilton Spectator noted last week, the community
has lost not only a friend, but a teacher whose name is "memorialized
in millions of tonnes of uncarved stone -- and grass, woods,
streams and caves."
Bruce William
DUNCAN was born on January 13, 1946, in Woking,
Surrey, England. He died in hospital in Brantford on November 11,
2006, after suffering injuries in a car accident near his home
in Paris, Ontario The vehicle he was driving had been struck
head-on by a car that had crossed the centre line. The other
diver was declared dead at the scene. He was 60. He leaves his
wife, Janet; two children, Katie, 10 and James, 13; one brother,
Jim, and a sister, Margaret
DEMUNNIK. A public celebration of
his life will be held at Bay Gardens Funeral and Memorial Centre,
1010 Botanical Dr., Burlington, Ontario on Saturday, November 25,
from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

CSILLAG o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2006-12-06 published
John EDMEADS,
Physician (1936-2006)
Gifted healer and teacher who was considered the world's expert
in headaches and migraines once described his own lingering agony
as 'still flapping its bat-like wings behind my brow'
By Ron CSILLAG,
Special▲ to The Globe and Mail, Page S7
Toronto -- Women make up roughly 75 per cent of the three million
migraine sufferers in Canada. So why is it that new drugs to
help manage acute migraines can, for some women at certain times,
make their headaches worse? Doctor John
EDMEADS,
Canada's migraine
guru, had an unvarnished answer: "Most physicians are men."
Not all headaches are created equal, and as many as 40 per cent
of menopausal women who take migraine medication may find their
headache getting worse. There are ways around the problem, such
as hormone replacements with lower doses of estrogen, but "it's
amazing how many neurologists out there don't know that," Doctor
EDMEADS
once observed.
Find a doctor who has what you have, goes the old saw; the empathy
will be automatic. A migraineur himself, Doctor
EDMEADS knew what
his patients were going through. Deploying his customary oratorical
flourish, he once described his own lingering agony as "still
flapping its bat-like wings behind my brow." A patient's first
few weeks off pain pills were "seven purple shades of hell."
A gifted healer, a much loved and widely admired teacher, administrator,
expert witness and all-around wit, Doctor
EDMEADS was considered
Canada's, if not the world's, pre-eminent medical specialist
in headaches and migraines. Anyone needing a brain doctor on
the day of his memorial service in Toronto was likely out of
luck; they were all packed into a room honouring a man lauded
as a physician's physician and neurologist's neurologist, yet
without a whiff of pretence.
"Doctors got better at diagnosing migraines because of John,"
said Canadian neurologist David Dodick, who completed a fellowship
in headache studies under Doctor
EDMEADS a decade ago and now works
at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. "Ask anyone who the
most gifted speaker on the subject was, and they would all say
'Dr. EDMEADS.'
I've never heard a negative word about him, ever,
around the world."
A neurologist at Toronto's Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre
for 39 years and professor at the University of Toronto's medical
faculty, where he won two Silver Shovel teaching awards for best
clinical lecturer, Doctor
EDMEADS knew well that even the word migraine
can weaken knees. It was largely on his watch that the skull-splitting
condition was understood, and has been proven as a neurological
disorder, not just something triggered by too much gin, chocolate
or a whiney two-year-old.
Even with recent advances, an estimated one-third of sufferers
do not seek treatment, and migraine continues to be misunderstood,
undertreated, and underdiagnosed.
The Migraine Association of Canada has noted some painful numbers:
In Canada, 3.2 million adults and 250,000 children suffer from
migraines, and absenteeism and loss of productivity resulting
from migraines cost the economy $20 every second, or about $600-million
annually.
Last year's Canadian Migraine in Women Survey alarmingly suggested
that 32 per cent of Canadian adult women suffer from debilitating
migraines (the worldwide ratio is 18 per cent of women and 6 per
cent of men, but the prevalence for women is thought to be vastly
understated).
Dr. EDMEADS placed hope in a relatively new class of migraine
medications called triptans, but "he was not the sort of guy
who sat in a lab and looked at molecules," said Valerie South,
a nurse and author of the 1996 book Migraine. "He was the king
of bedside manner. He let his patients do the talking."
Among them was Catherine Cripps, who was referred to Doctor
EDMEADS
after two other doctors were stumped by her "indescribable" pains.
"He nailed it right away," recalled Ms. Cripps, who was diagnosed
as having 11 leaks in her spinal cord -- with no cure. Even so,
"he counselled me in such a way as to give me strength and hope.
I will always be grateful for that."
Painkillers had their place, but Doctor
EDMEADS felt that some migraineurs
may be better off taking no medication at all. He and other specialists
recognized that up to 40 per cent of Canadian sufferers have
medication-induced headaches from both prescribed and over-the-counter
drugs.
"These patients feel they have to take something for pain all
the time, but in this case, the medication may not be doing them
any good," he told a 1995 news conference. In one study, six
months after withdrawal, about 70 per cent of patients reported
they were able to cope without painkillers. "They still have
migraines, but they don't feel out of control."
So what did Doctor
EDMEADS take for his own head pain? Would you
believe Alka-Seltzer? "It's liquid and it goes right to the root
of the trouble immediately," chuckled his sister, Marilyn
HENRY.
"He believed in it religiously."
Neither did he gloss over garden-variety tension headaches, which
affect about one-third of adults. They may not enjoy the pride
of place of migraines, "but they do represent a very significant
problem for many people. The pain is less severe than that of
migraine, and the picture of an attack less dramatic, but the
long-term suffering of someone with truly intrusive tension-type
headaches can often be equivalent to that due to the migraine."
Two brain-related events figured in Doctor
EDMEADS's formative years:
He stuttered as a child and adolescent. Speech therapy and lots
of practice helped him overcome the condition -- in spades. He
went on to win pretty much every teaching award in the field
(yet felt compelled to complete a master's degree in education
at the age of 60). And his father died of a brain tumour while
Dr. EDMEADS was a 25-year-old resident. As a family member, he
was not permitted to treat his father.
Neurology had been a fairly popular specialty at the time of
his graduation from the University of Toronto's medical school
in 1959 but headache wasn't. The story goes that one day 45 or
so years ago, Doctor
EDMEADS was meeting with his mentor, Doctor Henry
BARNETT. A pharmaceutical salesman entered and asked Doctor
BARNETT
to conduct a study on a new migraine drug. "There's your expert,"
Dr. BARNETT quickly sidestepped, pointing to his young protégé.
Dr. EDMEADS "accepted the challenge and did the study and became
an expert," said Don
COWAN, a former physician-in-chief at Sunnybrook
(a position held by Doctor
EDMEADS from 1994 to 2001.)
In 1988, Doctor
EDMEADS was part of a medical team that testified
on behalf of Kenneth James
PARKS, a 24-year-old who had stabbed
his mother-in-law to death and pleaded not guilty by reason of
somnambulism. The sleepwalking defence worked, and Mr.
PARKS
was acquitted.
Dr. EDMEADS also researched the history of migraines for the
World Headache Alliance and found many historical figures who
suffered from the disorder, perhaps even having been influenced
by it. They included painter Vincent Van Gogh, writers Virginia
Woolf and Lewis Carroll, Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Elvis Presley.
It was not for nothing that Doctor
EDMEADS bore a striking resemblance
to actor Alan Alda, down to the tall and lanky frame. Like Hawkeye
Pierce, Doctor
EDMEADS's wit was irreverent but never cutting. A sampling,
courtesy of his friend of 40 years, psychiatrist Fred
SHEFTEL:
Hospitalized with his cancer, Doctor
EDMEADS asked Friends not to
call his wife after 10 p.m. "She'll think it's the hospital telling
her I'm dead"
A medical expert was "anyone who comes from more than 50 miles
away with slides"
Most lectures "are characterized by the information on the slide
going from the mouth of the lecturer to the ears of the listener
without going through the minds of either"
The extent of injuries and disabilities arising from post-traumatic
whiplash disorder "depends on the kind of car the driver sees
in the rearview mirror -- Ford or Mercedes."
Did Doctor
EDMEADS diagnose his own terminal condition? No one knows,
but he did come to work one day and instructed his loyal assistant,
Hazel JOFFE, to throw away the slew of awards, plaques and citations
on his wall, calling them "pure vanity." She took them down,
but moved them to a residents' room at Sunnybrook named for him.
Dr. EDMEADS was the first Canadian to serve as president of the
American Headache Society, which awarded him one final, posthumous
kudo: The 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dr.JohnGordonEDMEADS was born in Toronto on April 15, 1936,
and died there on November 16, 2006, of acute leukemia. He was
He leaves his wife, Catherine
BERGERON, a neuropathologist; a
son, Christopher; brother Ralph and sister Marilyn
HENRY.